Editorial: Privilege no shield from punishment

After being convicted of bad behavior, the rich and powerful are likely to propose that their fall from grace is punishment enough. The suggestion is that they should enjoy some sort of immunity from serious punishment even when it is discovered their accomplishments were not the results of honest effort.

Scott Salyer, the Pebble Beach tomato baron, is not the first to argue that the humiliation he has sustained should knock years off his upcoming prison term. Based on what his lawyers have presented in court papers, he also is not the most convincing.

The heir to one of the most successful farming families in California is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court next week for price-fixing and racketeering, prosecutorial shorthand for a pattern of bribery, deception and general corruption while he was the head of SK Foods in Monterey, one of the world's largest vendors of tomato paste. Under his direction, SK agents routinely bribed buyers at other companies to pay inflated prices for substandard tomato paste.

He pleaded guilty last year as part of a plea bargain that limits the court to assessing a fine and incarcerating him for between four and seven years.

Prosecutors argue that numerous factors support the maximum sentence, including a large number of victims. When Salyer's lawyers dispute that, they are disregarding the thousands of SK Foods employees who lost their jobs when his crimes were uncovered.

His lawyers portray him as a broken man who became malnourished and "physically and psychologically distressed" while in jail before being confined to Pebble Beach house arrest for the past two years.

"He suffers from diabetes, peptic ulcer disease, back and ankle pain, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, anemia and alcoholism," according to his court papers. He has been drinking heavily of late, they continue, but hopes to be assigned to a recovery program while assigned to a federal prison camp.

The defense describes Salyer as "remorseful," making no mention of the Operation Rotten Tomato website, www.scott-salyer.com/, in which he or someone close to him blames his problems on everyone except him, even the media. The website accuses the FBI of stomping on his dog and trying to pressure him to kill himself. It accuses Sacramento jail officials of alternately starving him and lacing his food with sewage.

The prosecutors see it all much differently.

To the defense argument that Salyer "has never before been in trouble," the prosecution produces taped comments in which Salyer relates his previous experiences in the cotton industry. When Japanese buyers declined to accept a flawed cotton shipment, the company would simply relabel it and send it back to the same buyers.

"Just send it back to them. Re-code it," he told associates. It was not the only conversation of that sort.

Salyer's lawyers described his seven months awaiting trial in the Sacamento County Jail as "far harsher or more severe than anything which will be meted out under terms of this plea agreement."

The prosecution replied, "While in pretrial custody, he was given extraordinary access to his attorneys.... He used that privilege to smuggle in pornography, have lascivious conversations with his bar-member girlfriend and apparently have unmonitored visits with her."

The Salyer team stresses he had no previous criminal history and led "a respectable life as a hardworking businessman, a philanthropic and active community member and a loving father to two daughters." It seems significant, though, that the lawyers provide no explanation for his criminal turn, no mitigating circumstances, no duress, no gun to his head.

The portrait that emerges from the court record is that of a man who start out fabulously wealthy and used his position to lie, cheat and steal simply to make more money. He argues he is now broke, in debt and unable to pay any significant fine.

We argue the fine should be set as high as the law allows just in case he's not being entirely truthful. It would not be the first time.